On 13 Dec 2009, at 13:48, Jim McKenney wrote:
> ...my thoughts all week have been with those of you in the West Coast: the
> Internet is full of postings relating to the awful weather out there – and
> not just on garden-related sites.
Well, here in Victoria, things have not been too bad.
For comparison, last December we had two or three nights of truly unseasonable
cold when it got down to -12C, whereas this year we had six nights or so where
it got down to -6C, no worse. And in February 1989 we had a month-long cold
spell sufficient to freeze the soil a good foot deep.
What's been more unusual is the rainfall which has been much greater this year;
usually our really wet weather waits for January-February. As I said in a
posting a few days ago, if we have losses of bulbs, the wet weather preceding
the cold spell will be partly to blame.
One interesting phenomenon: it snowed last night, just a dusting, and now it's
all melted *except* on the raised bed. One can't help but suspect that raised
beds with their exposed perimeters freeze worse than soil on the flat. Raised
bed owners may do well to throw a tarp over them when really cold weather hits.
I don't anticipate any great loss of garden plants, at least not to the weather
we've had so far.
--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate
on beautiful Vancouver Island
http://maps.google.ca/maps/…